


Bring on the Wonder

by effie214



Category: Doctor Who RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-31
Updated: 2012-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-30 09:57:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/330483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/effie214/pseuds/effie214
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I pushed you down deep in my soul for too long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bring on the Wonder

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Ambreen. Happy belated birthday, love. Title and summary from the Susan Enan song of the same name.

She’s nine the first time she meets him, eyes wide in admiration and wonder. There is magic swirling around him and it’s hard not to get caught up in it.

(Later, when she’s much older, Karen will tell her she felt the same way from the very beginning – so much so that it wasn’t really a beginning at all, but instead the warm, comfortable sensation of _so this is home_ rolling over them like the fog that settles in the hills around her home.)

She’s had her tenth birthday by the second time she meets him, and her admiration is curving into fascination as they run around the museum set. His hand is welcoming and protective as it envelops hers, and she looks up into his eyes and thinks I could get used to this.

(It’s apparently a family trait.)

He comes to see her in a school play around her eleventh birthday. (She’ll later cradle the synchronicity to her heart like Amelia’s teddy bear, tucking it within her heart for safekeeping.) It’s her second performance, but opening night jitters explode into a thousand fire-tipped butterflies in her stomach when she realizes he’s in the audience. He, who brings effortless enchantment to every movement, look and word; he who told her to be smart in life and just dream her dreams.

(She falters on the first word and glances toward him for encouragement.

It’s a movement echoed in an overheard conversation between her mother and her aunt years later, when Karen’s mum laughs that apparently Matt, ever the clumsy and ill-begotten multitasker, couldn’t croak the requisite words past the worry she might say no while simultaneously balancing on one knee and fidgeting to get the telltale blue box – oh, the symbiosis of it all – open to show her his promise of forever starts now.)

She’s eleven and three-quarters when she marches onto a set draped in history to watch him die. It’s the hardest scene she’s ever done, watching him falter on the marble floor, fighting for purchase against the poisonous tide. It’s all she can do not to reach out to him, to break past not only the fourth wall but her defenses – even if she’s still a little too young to put into words all that she feels. But she knows it’s there and fights mightily to hide it.

(It’s a harbinger of things to come. She’ll know that pain and panic again when Karen gets a call while she’s back in Scotland visiting that a cable snapped on the set of the Christmas special and while he’s fine – no, really, Kazza, he’s _fine_ , he’s happily having wheelchair races in A&E and, no, Karen, you needn’t come ba—all right, I’ll book it for you, Beth sighs from over the phone. Caitlin insists on going with her, as she needs to see with her own eyes that while he may be bloodied and bruised, he’s not broken.

She fetches Karen tea while they settle him upstairs for observation, but ends up throwing it away, for when she returns to his room, Karen’s in the bed with him, head on his shoulder.

The only soothing she needs is his heartbeat beneath her ear, not the scent of chamomile.)

She’s twelve when they film on the spooky hotel set, and she can feel a tenacious bite in the air the minute she walks on set.

He’s as kind to her as ever, making a half-hearted joke about her being prettier than her cousin, but even at her young age, she can tell his heart’s not in it.   
He glances over his shoulder at Karen numerous times as though he’s gauging something – perhaps things left unsaid and time counting down despite his best intentions – like he’s bracing for the inevitable end.

Or perhaps the end has already come.

(Karen seems ageless as Caitlin grows, and the two email and text back and forth with increasing regularity, their age gap somehow lessening in feeling even as it remains steadfast in logic.

But their DNA is not predisposed to logic, and Caitlin finds out about the brief split a few days after it happens. 

Her cousin’s short, terse replies still belie a thorough sense of sadness, and it’s the first time Caitlin really wonders if there’s any payoff at all for love.)

She’s invited to the party to celebrate Karen and Arthur’s departures from the show, sitting at a high-top table with legs swinging, chin in one hand, the other occupied with stirring the straw in her pop while her mum, Beth and Piers chat amiably nearby.

Caitlin doesn’t pay them much mind. Instead, her eyes are focused on a familiar profile – jettisoned chin and ridiculously floppy hair – standing in the darkened corner and watching as the world goes by – or, more aptly, as his world begins to fall to pieces around him.

She slides off her stool and makes her way to him, gently pushing other partygoers aside as she had ages before during “The Big Bang.” She has the fortitude to know she hasn’t got the words to take her Doctor’s obvious pain from him, so she simply reaches for his hand and squeezes his fingers in sympathy and solidarity.

His chuckle is watery and he leans down to press a kiss to the top of her head in thanks.

(The future pushes through her in static waves, and soon it’s she who is kissing the top of a child’s gossamer head as the sun blankets its last rays over a newly created family.

She glances up at an exhausted Karen and a befuddled Matt and realizes _this_ is the payoff, and it's the greatest one she could ever imagine.)


End file.
